Okay. I have 2 blogs I want to write today. Not sure I will get to one of them. It may have to wait till tomorrow but we will see how busy I am here at work today. But I want to write this one first. This one is about this weekends message that Sharon brought at church. Man did I need to hear it and I loved hearing someone I know loves me a lot and who I love a lot be the one to teach on it.
How well do I do in living in the truth that God made me to love me. You know what, as much as I have grown in it in the last few months, it fluctuates to much. My circumstances have had a tendency to throw me around and unsettle me. It's retarded I know, and I am starting to get to much more settled spot. It helps when I am not choosing to look at me all the time. My foundation has been so weak for so long. It is taking time to rebuild it in me. So glad it is getting more solid.
We discussed the voices that we let play in our head at life group last night. Mine are too numerous to list here. They have always been so loud and drowned out the voice of God. Slowly but surely they are starting to get quieter. Or at least He has let me recognize more when they are talking to me and I am getting quicker at refuting them and choosing Him. It's not a natural response though. I want to be in a place where it is just a natural response to not be in my own head listening to past voices or my own voices. Where His is so clear in my ear that it is not work all the time to come back to center. Granted over the last couple months it has moved from taking weeks to get it to maybe hours. Or a couple days. And it is still work.
The work in some ways over the last few months has shown on me. In not great ways. Whether it just be a sense of heaviness on me or my lack or really being around in a lot of ways. Not fully being engaged or connected or fully able to get my head and heart around things. I've been putting this stuff together after Justin had the foresight to call me out on it. I knew things weren't feeling right but hadn't really wanted to spend any time with it. It was probably easier to just leave. But the past week and a half or so I've been trying to look closer at it.
Several things occur to me. The overarching thing I think is a feeling of a loss of myself in someways. Yes it sounds selfish but that's not the point or idea. It's weird the more I gave up me and what I wanted and what I may have needed at times, the more I focused on me and what I wasn't getting and then turned it around to what everyone else was getting. It was a weird dichotomy of selfless self. Not selfless in a good way of giving of yourself freely and really being selfless. I think it was giving up of stuff out of obligation and people pleasing. My time was not my own not cause I really made it so and was in a heart place to say that fully, but because that is what I thought I had to do. Either out of bending to other people's will or cause it was a point of "this is how I will be accepted." It's made me tired.
I was realizing last week, I miss my old life. That's weird in so many ways. I don't need to go back. But I was missing the freedom of my choice I guess. To do something cause I really wanted to and really was connected to it. The fun of getting to go out. The way that being at a concert all the time was so refueling to me. Playing music that I got to write and really craft and not just playing a guitar in something I really have very little invested in.
I let my tank go empty. I haven't been listening to Jesus' voice saying well done in any way. Or telling me He loves me. I've just been doing. I haven't been refueling at all. I have even given up the things I know refuel me in an effort to look selfless I guess. Playing music that I got to write, so refueling, so close to my heart. So not happening. I gave it up. I knew it was the right thing to do at the time. But didn't let Jesus give me a back up plan for how He was gonna fill that void for me. I just gave it up and assumed it would be filled somehow. And in the meantime just told people "oh yeah I love getting to play at church." I do, but it isn't a refueling station to my heart.
I have people around a lot just for the sake of having people around. I know I have a tendency to isolate, but I am realizing I can even accomplish that in a crowd. I don't ask for specific time with people I know have a direct connect to my heart and can really refuel me in the right ways. I'm just a face in the crowd even when I am being involved and cracking jokes and all that. In my head I am still sitting in a corner alone.
None of this is good. I'm asking Jesus for the right steps to take. I just started putting some of this together today and over the weekend. I was around people almost all weekend and still felt outside of things. Disconnected. It's like I have lost a real connection with people somewhere along the line. Lost a real connection with myself and who I am and who I am being made to be. Lost a real connection to who Jesus says I am.
That was reforged in words yesterday. Clear words that went straight to my heart. Dug straight into whatever protective wall I had started putting back up again because the surgery that has been done in me has been hurting and has been hard. It has seemed endless and I just wanted to crawl into a hole. I guess I did and it took being called out of it. Last week by Justin and yesterday from words Sharon said that I hope people didn't miss. Words that should mark everyone of us to the core. Words I want placed on me somewhere so I never forget.
"Something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it." God deemed me worth the death of His son on a cross. WHAT?!? In that one act He said "Jon, you are so worthy and loved and someone I want to be with that I will pay with my own child's life to buy you back." That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. You know what, how in the world do I forget that? That's the biggest thing I heard the day I gave my life to Jesus. It's words He spoke so clearly to me through the people I was standing in that circle with and He spoke directly to me with His own words and He wrapped me up. How do I forget those words?
That reorients everything. That changes everything. Everything I thought I needed to sacrifice to be worthy. Bunk. Everything I thought I had to do to please Him and please my leaders. Bunk. Every selfish choice I made or selfish word I spoke. Bunk. Every distrustful thought I had. Every time I chose to refute words that were spoken to me or think I deserved something. Bunk. He bled and died so I could be with Him. Everything else is idiotic.
Truth of the matter is that He wants me to be in community with Him and He made me a certain way. He knows just how my heart ticks. He knows that every time I listen to a band I like, my heart yearns to be playing. He knows every time I sit through a wedding alone, my heart feels alone. He knows every time I step on stage at church that I am battling performance and separating playing a concert with really worshipping Him. (I'm actually quite thankful for our new stage. Its so big it is hard to see people or hear them in our ear buds so all I can do is enter into my own state of worship with Him. There are tons of people in the room and cause of that separation, its just me and Him.) He's knows me better than I know myself. So I want even more Him to tell me what I should be doing. I want my filter ripped down. I don't want to process through every word that is ever spoken to me and put my own light on it to make sure of whether I am gonna listen or not. And He knows how I tick. I can listen to Him and not say yes to the things I don't need to. I have said yes out of a fear of what if I say no and someone else gets something down the road instead of me. I've said yes to things I know I didn't need to or that I didn't go to Him with. Now I feel stuck in things. That's bad. Had I gone to Him first, maybe I would have heard, "hey, I have something better for you than this one."
I want to have ears like that. Ears that hear His voice in things. Not ones that I am creating. I want to listen for Him in the middle of things. This is especially on rolls I am in or serving points and such. When a leader tells me to pray about something, I probably really should. Not just say yes. I don't want to filter out that leader and say "well you aren't Jesus so I will check on it." Obviously He speaks through them and asks are made of me through my leaders. But I'm Jesus has words He tries to speak directly to me in there and I have blanketly said yes to something that He could have had a different answer for. What if I was supposed to say "that doesn't sound right for me but I would really love to be in process with you on what that next step is."
Okay this is really long and I don't know that I have explained myself really well. This reads with contradictory points. Sounding selfish at points and not about me at others. I realize that. I am starting to come to the conclusion though that it's not selfish to be in the places you know are for you and to say no to ones that you know aren't. And I want Jesus defining that for me instead of just giving up myself into spots that are not for me. That's where I lost myself and I lost Jesus' picture of me. So in saying I want to regain myself. I want to regain Jesus' picture of me and what He really has in store for me. Not sure how that looks at the moment, but when I am on that right page, then I will be serving in the right spirit and not letting my tank get low and getting selfish and all about me. Hard to be about myself when I am living in His love and know that I am right where He wants me cause those places will always be where I want to be so I will forget about me in it and just be able to do it. Man, I just confused myself a little bit. :)
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